Read Raphael for Free Online Page A

in his artisanly way that he’d like to build something that looked like that.
    Saara gazed at Raphael with an expression akin to pain. She was not considering his face or form, however, but his danger. And as she remembered that Damiano had loved the angel, she also remembered that she had not always been understanding about that. She turned her head away.
    Lucifer looked at his brother and flinched; the Devil himself flinched and uttered a strangled cry, for he was as sensitive to beauty as any creature born. It hurt him.
    Raphael saw his brother’s wincing without surprise. Lucifer always reacted to the sight of him like that. He regarded Lucifer with his own, quite different feelings. “What is it, Satan? What wicked deed is in your hands now?”
    Lucifer’s great eyes rounded and he lifted his hands in protest, if not to heaven, then at least to the sky. “And they dare to call me cruel! He convicts me of crime without knowing there has been a crime, and though he is kin to me, refuses me my proper name!
    â€œRaphael, you are nothing but a bigot—a narrow-minded and conventional burgher among a similar rabble, fearing to be anything more or less than your neighbor.” Lucifer sighed with sad disapproval, but he found his eyes sliding away from that visage of light.
    â€œBut no matter, brother. I brought you here only to help me identify a creature. You have always been so interested in… animal husbandry.
    â€œSee,” he proclaimed, gesturing openhanded toward Saara on the table. “It attacked me in Lombardy and hung around my neck halfway home.”
    As he approached the table; Lucifer waved his hand once more and a buff-colored dove appeared, wings spread and beak open in threat. At another motion of Lucifer’s the dove became a snowy owl which blinked, hissing, in the light of day.
    At a third command the bird swelled into a white bear, which, though miniature, was still large enough to yank Kadjebeen’s model after it as it lunged wildly at the Devil’s throat. The demon squeaked in apprehension.
    â€œWhat do you suppose it is?” inquired Lucifer of his brother.
    Raphael stood beside the table. His wings spread out sideways, almost dividing the chamber in two. His face was gentle.
    â€œShe is the greatest witch in the Italies,” he replied to Lucifer. “Perhaps the greatest in all Europe.
    â€œGod be with you, Saara of the Saami,” said Raphael to her.
    As though she were throwing off a great weight, Saara divested herself of the shapes the Devil forced upon her.
    â€œGet out of here, Chief of Eagles. It’s a trap.”
    Raphael met her eyes, but made no reply. Instead his wings rose slowly to the vaulted ceiling, and he asked, “Why did you do this, Satan? This woman was never any business of yours.”
    Lucifer’s sculpted eyebrows echoed the movement of the angel’s wings. “Satan you call me, as though you were some grubbing mortal yourself! And you tell me what is my business…”
    He strode across the room, his hands locked behind his back and his gaze wandering mildly out of the windows. “That is miserable manners even when the busybody is right, but in this case, Raphael, you are quite mistaken. There is in this little female a streak of bitterness and jealousy I can quite appreciate—jealousy of whom, I wonder, brother? But even if there were not… even if she were that rare, malformed, or brainless sort of mortal content with everything that befell him…
    â€œAll mortals are my business and have been so since the plague of them were spawned. They are far more MY business, Raphael, than yours. In fact, one might almost say that I stand in the place of their shepherd.
    â€œOn earth, that is.”
    Then Lucifer turned in place and regarded Raphael with bored disdain. “But we have had this discussion before.”
    The angel nodded. “I remember the last time. It was